Frosty finish to UW-Gonzaga rivalry

Once-friendly adversaries play final scheduled game in cross-state series today

By DAN RALEY, P-I REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Friday, December 8, 2006

SPOKANE -- A prolonged Washington-Gonzaga basketball series was put together by friendship, by coaches who could sit and laugh together, maybe over beers somewhere. At the time, their programs were good, not great. Their teams were never ranked, never discussed on SportsCenter. There was nothing to lose.

No one felt threatened by this arrangement, certainly not the Huskies, who generously agreed to a schedule of alternating sites when they clearly held more bargaining power than Gonzaga, previously agreeing to just one road game with the Bulldogs over sporadic meetings since World War II.

Tonight, this non-conference spectacle goes on hiatus after the teams meet for the ninth consecutive season, with a raucous, sold-out, McCarthey Athletic Center serving as an appropriate backdrop.

People across the state and in various basketball uniforms are asking what gives?

"We're not playing them anymore?" an incredulous UW guard Justin Dentmon said a week ago. "I didn't know. I'm disappointed."

The reason behind the split is as complicated as Paul McCartney's divorce decree, with the proper explanation derived from the following options: a) Josh Heytvelt; b) ambition; c) jealousy; or d) all of the above.

Anyone who has chosen the latter receives a beer-stained coaster, with a forged autograph of former Zags standout John Stockton inscribed on it, supplied by Jack and Dan's, the Stockton family's well-utilized watering hole just off the GU campus.

This series was doomed once these schools started reaching for the same thing -- uncharted basketball success.

Diplomacy was fostered by former Zags coach Dan Monson, who is now looking for work after his recent resignation from Minnesota, and ex-UW assistant Ray Giacoletti, solidly entrenched as the Utah coach. They were buddies, friendly combatants and masterminds behind this intrastate fun.

By the 2002-03 season, halfway through the series contract, Mark Few, Monson's former aide, and Lorenzo Romar, who replaced Giacoletti's fired boss, Bob Bender, were in charge of the opposing forces, bringing a different mindset to the table, bordering on competitive rather than cooperative. They had no warm and fuzzy history. They still don't.

The Huskies, the ones officially pulling the plug on the rivalry proceedings, have said over and over that all they want is future scheduling freedom, which is only part of it.

Begrudgingly, the two sides acknowledge they don't like each other much.

"Regardless of our relationship -- and I don't mean it in a bad way when I say that their staff and our staff aren't best friends and we don't hang out -- but it's what's best for Washington," Romar said, referring to the series exit. "Even if all their coaches were in my wedding, we'd still be doing this."

"If they want to play us again, there's probably a place for them on the schedule," Few said stiffly.

With different dynamics in place, the series was a short-timer. Romar's lead assistant, Cameron Dollar, got caught making too many recruiting contacts in his pursuit of Heytvelt, the 6-foot-11 forward from Clarkston and a projected NBA first-round pick, outraging Gonzaga, which later signed the beguiling big man.

In turn, the Huskies were deeply offended by the manner in which Gonzaga dealt with the issue, leaking the transgressions to third parties rather than directly confronting them.

"Part of what happened was who was disgruntled, and it was Barbara Hedges and I who had a lengthy discussion -- and she's not there anymore," Gonzaga athletic director Mike Roth said. "If anyone had a discussion on it, it was just Barbara and I. We dealt with it. That's water way under the bridge."

Yet after the first contest involving Romar and Few, a wild affair won by the Zags 95-89 in overtime, the respective coaches, after concluding their postgame interviews, walked to the far end of the old Kennel and talked alone for the longest time about their differences.

"I only have to say something once and then, with me, it's over with," Romar said.

Residue, however, has turned up in odd places. After holding open practices during his first three seasons, Romar closed them to reporters last season, citing the "Gonzaga factor." He felt his team was compromised before the 2004-05 game against the Zags, that the opponent awaiting him and beating him 99-87 in Spokane seemed a little too well prepared.

Similarly, Few, who once welcomed Seattle media members to his office with open arms and permitted them reasonable practice access, has become more reclusive and closed his workout doors.

No one trusts anyone lingering around their high-powered programs. Lines in the sand have been drawn. There's really no mystery to it. The Zags and Huskies want the same things. They seek the same recruits, haggling over Heytvelt, UW forward Phil Nelson a year ago, and more recently, Canadian 7-footer Robert Sacre, who has signed with Gonzaga. They each want higher rankings, a higher profile, and to be the first to turn up in the Final Four.

The Zags currently hold the nation's longest homecourt winning streak at 44, never losing in their new arena in 33 games. The Huskies had the longest streak a year ago, running it to 31 before losing.

Separated by 275 miles, the schools couldn't be closer in competitive nature. Nearly everyone involved is cognizant of the tension caused by this.

"There has never been a keen or close-knit relationship between Washington and Gonzaga," UW freshman centerSpencer Hawes said. "Now that the programs are both so good that adds to the disdain."

The teams have become Kentucky and Louisville of the Northwest. Those haughty Southern schools wouldn't schedule each other regularly until finally agreeing to a home-and-home series beginning with the 1983-84 season and have played every year since. An overtime game that arbitrarily paired them in the 1983 NCAA Tournament, won 80-69 by the Cardinals, forged a steady partnership after a 24-year estrangement. Kentucky holds a 13-11 edge since the restart.

The UW and Gonzaga appear nowhere near resurrecting their non-conference series. To make that happen, the Huskies might require a weighted scheduling arrangement, much like they demand of other mid-major schools, such as a 2-for-1 series format. That idea would not go over well in Spokane.

"The school that's been in the Top 20 and in the national spotlight for some time is the school you think would dictate those kind of things," Gonzaga's Roth said. "For the last 10 years, it's not been in Seattle."

To a man, UW players said they would prefer keeping this game on the schedule. They're not interested in the politics. They're intrigued with the atmosphere, sold-out arenas and corresponding drama.

"I wanted to play this series until I graduated," Dentmon opined.

The only thing the series has lacked is national TV coverage, attracting only regional broadcasts, but that could change if these teams keep winning in huge amounts. A major network could bring them back together.

Meantime, the Huskies and Zags will continue to loathe each other through tonight's meeting before they go their separate ways, an outcome that makes no sense to the combatants involved.

"That's the whole reason to play them," Huskies freshman guard Adrian Oliver said. "If you don't like someone, that's why you play them."

NOTES: The series stands 29-13 in the Huskies' favor, but the Zags have won seven of past eight meetings. ... Gonzaga's Micah Downs, a transfer from Kansas and former Bothell and Juanita High School player, is out until late December with foot stress fracture.